A top Koch network group on Wednesday launched another ad in Wisconsin attacking former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) over an opioid prescription scandal at a Veterans Affairs medical center.
{mosads}The new web ad from Freedom Partners Action Fund, a super-PAC that spearheads the conservative donor network helmed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, follows a $2 million TV and digital ad buy in Wisconsin earlier this week.
The digital spot, titled “No Comparison,” features VA whistleblower Ryan Honl, who says Feingold received a memo about the issue at the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center in 2009 and ignored the problem.
Honl, who also appeared in Monday’s ad, blasted Feingold’s response to that spot and knocked the former senator for shifting the blame on his opponent, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
Honl also touted the GOP senator’s efforts in “accountability and advocating for veterans choice.”
“Russ Feingold could have started an investigation on what was happening in this state,” Honl said in the new ad. “Now he wants to get a seat back from a man who actually is doing something to clean out the second largest federal bureaucracy. He doesn’t deserve it.”
Feingold and Johnson are locked in what is considered one of the most competitive Senate races this cycle as Democrats seek to regain control of the majority in the upper chamber.
Feingold’s campaign earlier this week called the first ad “false” and attacked Johnson over veterans’ issues.
“Sen. Johnson failed to protect our veterans, so instead of accepting responsibility, he and his allies have blamed his own staff and actively politicized a tragedy to the tune of over $2 million in dark money attack ads,” Feingold spokesman Michael Tyler said in a statement Monday. “If Johnson’s hands were clean, he’d demand that Freedom Partners take down this misleading ad.”